Run Sunita Run

It was Saturday afternoon and most of the girls were studying under the shades of big maple tree at the south west side of the big lawn. Those tree makes a round circle on of that lawn from the border of it which is just in front of the Bal Mandir main gate. During off days, we were allowed to roam in this place.  But we were not supposed to play in  this part of the ground during office hours. Our mid term exam was on the next day, so we were studying like that.

The main gate of the Bal Mandir used to remain closed on those days also, so that none of us sneak out and then get lost; for this very reason stray cows or other stray animals hardly used to wander inside the Bal Mandir, although it had plenty of green grass to feed them.

But, on this lazy saturday afternoon, a cow entered inside the gate and the old gatekeeper was trying to shoo it out from the gate, but in vain. It seemed that it was not inside the Bal Mandir in search of green grass, but something else; and please don't ask me what, because I don't know the answer.

As we saw the gatekeeper chasing cow, we found this amusing and started laughing ; but soon, it started coming towards us. Seeing this, we girls scattered so that we don't get hit by this cow.

When I was child, I was a fat like pumpkin. I came third in ranking of all children, inside the Bal Mandir. So I guess, I was regarded one of the fattest child in the lot, specially looking at my height and when there were 200 children to be compared. Needless to mention, when that cow approached us closely, all the other could get out its sight fast; but I found myself facing the cow, on its horn not eyes from by some distance. I was so closed that I was frightened by hitting with its horns. So I started running away from it, and cow chased me from behind, just within a meter of distance. All the girls now somehow relieved that they were not the one, but it was me. They started shouting from my back to encouraging me, “Run Sunita Run, its just behind you.” That encouragement made me run harder than before. I was running on the narrow lane that circled the lawn, Later on I came to know that, my running ahead of cow just amused the girls. Told you, I was one of the fattest girl.

“Sunita, throw up your [red] skirt, it's the color, this cow is chasing, not you.” one girl shouted from behind. “Seeing red color, just agitate cows, so throw up your skirt” another girl shouted from distance again. But, unlike other girls, I never used to were shamise , so I could not do what they were telling me to do. So, not having any choice, I had to run harder and run away from that cow fast. However, me being a fat girl, running sure was not made for me, so I started breathing heavily. It could have been less than 10 minutes of running like that, but, I was already breathless like anything. At last, seeing no other option; I risked crossing that thorny natural  bar, to enter inside the lawn again, which was located at the east side of the lawn which semi circled the lawn. This just distracted the cow, as it could not cross the bar. As I entered inside the lawn, I was straight on the ground lying on my belly and was sniffing the strong earthy smell coming from it; of all kinds of summer grass and plant that was on the ground, that was so close to my nose. There could have been light scars on my hand and legs, and perhaps some bleeding also but that I can't remember now.

I raised my head to see towards the other girls, just to see what they are doing,  where we were sitting and studying for our exams. All of them were laughing hard and some are even rolling on the ground. It really angered me, but I still had not caught up my normal breath to utter anything. It may have taken about 5-10 minutes for me to catch up my breath and regain my normal breath to walk towards them and shout out, “why are you laughing instead of distracting the cow ?”

Junkiri, spoke amid laughter, “the way you ran, was so funny sight for us to watch and it was more interesting for us to see you run like that, rather distract the cow.” and with that; she tried to copy how I looked, when I was running. She is the master caricature and its really impossible to hold my own laughter seeing her run like that. Of course, as always she did it with little exaggerated version of me running but, that part exactly made it more funny and laugh at it.

Its really hard to understand some people find it funny; and laugh out loud at it when others are in real trouble. Well cow chasing may not fall in real trouble to adult, but when I was about fourteen or maybe less than that, and fat girl amongst the group, it was a big trouble for me to face at that young age.

But today when I see bullfights on TV and when bull gets upset and throws the jocky out in the air, I am the one who laugh out loud, and at the same time it keeps me laughing for many more days to come.